


Choice

by AndromedaPrime



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, Mech Preg, Mpreg, Rape, Sparklings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndromedaPrime/pseuds/AndromedaPrime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giving up his son was the hardest thing he’d ever done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choice

**Author's Note:**

> This was born out of a crackish headcanon that I had come up with weeks ago on a chat with [eiseedoesit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eiseedoesit/profile). It's no longer cracky; it's really sad instead.

“Ultra Magnus, sir, you’re…” Red Alert bit down on her lower lipplate and didn’t seem to want to look the Commander of the Autobots in the optics. “You’re sparked.”

_Leering red optics set in an ugly grey face loomed over him. He looked helplessly at the chains and cuffs that held his servos together and tried to kick the much larger mech off of him but found himself pinned to the ground._

_“Following me? Thinking you could take on me, young one?”_

_Magnus snarled and tried his hardest to wriggle his way out of the Decepticon leader’s grip but large servos palmed at his interfacing panel._

_“I will make you regret having followed me here, Ultra Magnus.”_

_“Please,” he pleaded, breaking down and shaking violently as his interfacing panel was torn from its hinges, sending pain through his systems. “Just,” he cried out, tears falling down his faceplates, “ just take me offline. Please.”_

“How?”

Red Alert showed him the datapad she held in her servos. It clearly indicated the presence of a second spark signature within the newly appointed Commander’s frame. He took it into his own servos and looked down at the damning evidence. There was an outline of his frame and within it, a faint spark signature located in his gestation chamber.

He didn’t know his servos were shaking until the medic took the datapad out of his grip and placed her servos on his quaking ones, saying, “You don’t have to keep it. There are two other options.”

Ultra Magnus shut his optics and clenched his servos into fists, resting them on his knees. He leaned over slightly and forced his labored breaths to even out. “What other options are there?”

“Option one would be termination. I go in there and pluck the sparklet out. It’s still so young that it won’t have any negative effect on your frame.”

The logical part of Magnus felt that one would be the safest option. Right now it could be done, and no one other than he and Red Alert would be the wiser.

“And the other one?”

Red Alert cleared her vocalizer. “If you feel you can withstand the carrying cycle, we can offer the sparkling for adoption. Completely sealed and closed off; there won’t be a whisper that you were the carrier.”

Magnus reopened his optics and looked at the medic in her optics. “I will have to recharge on it tonight.”

Red Alert arched an optic ridge at him and pursed her lipplates, nodding in assent. “Fine. I will see you in here tomorrow for a checkup.”

.-.-.

His chassis was still covered in scratches and dents and his spark ached from the forced merge. He felt a throbbing ache in his valve that he sorely wished would go away so it wouldn’t remind him of what had been done to him.

Megatron’s words echoed in his processor, about regret. He sorely did, and there was no way to reverse the passage of time. He would spend the rest of his lifecycle regretting the choice he had made in that moment, in the heat of battle when he saw the large form of the Decepticon leader retreating to an enclosed space and he got it in his processor to follow.

If he hadn’t followed at all, if he’d just stayed put alongside the other Autobots that he commanded and lead, he would not have been in this situation.

Magnus resisted the carrier protocols that had already come online in the past half solar-cycle, since he’d kindled, and lay down on the berth in his quarters. He sighed heavily and closed his optics. His spark was a mess, torn between wanting to spare the little one a chance at life and wanting to _give_ the little one a chance at life.

This sparkling… it was Megatron’s spawn. If he let another Megatron loose on the universe he would never forgive himself.

And if he terminated this innocent sparkling… he would never be able to live with himself. Nor forgive himself.

The carrier protocols won over him and he slowly placed his servos on his midsection, processor full of thoughts about the tiny life pulsing within him. A tiny life that had come into existence and that didn’t know of anything else besides its own existence.

He bit down on his lower lipplate and closed his optics. He was glad for the soundproofing in his quarters; his mournful sobs were rather loud.

.-.-.

“I will carry to term and place the sparkling for adoption.”

“Are you sure?”

“I would not have said anything if I was not certain.”

“It will be a very long process and it will not be kind to you, Ultra Magnus. Your processor will be overwhelmed with the duties of carrying and making sure the sparkling is safe, and also with your current duties to the Autobots. You will be extremely fatigued and prone to nausea, not to mention that you,” Red Alert rubbed a servo over his abdomen, making him flinch, “will start to swell at least by the halfway point. It’s still a little far off, but when it happens it tends to send the carrier into a massive panic attack. Especially…”

“Especially?”

“Especially coming from your situation, Ultra Magnus.” Red Alert looked at him with guarded optics and sighed, pulling out one of his arms and injecting nutrient-enriched energon into his systems. “You had this situation placed upon you suddenly, no warning, and you did not want this in the first place. Do you wish to visit with a counselor to ensure that you are making-”

“Red Alert, we will cease further discussion of anything regarding the sparkling unless it regards their care and plans for placing it in a home for younglings.”

The femme thinned her lipplates and jerked the needle out of Magnus’s arm a little rougher than necessary. “Fine. I apologize for overstepping my boundaries.”

.-.-.

_Knock knock!_

“Ultra Magnus?”

_Knock knock knock!_

“Ultra Magnus, sir?”

The mech gripped the edges of the waste receptacle and sighed heavily, closing his optics to avoid looking at the dregs of energon that he had retched into the can. So early in the morning and he was already sick. “Who is it?” he called out in as authoritative a voice as he could muster.

“You missed your daily injection.”

“Leave me alone, Red Alert. I tire of the needles.”

He heard the sounds of an override code being used on the doors to his quarters. They slid apart and the formidable femme stepped through, energon cubes colored a deep blue and a syringe placed in a tray she carried.

“May I have one day where I don’t need this?”

Red Alert gave him a sour look and jabbed a syringe in his shoulder strut, eliciting a hiss from the Commander of the Autobots. “Since you refuse to pin the parentage of your sparkling on any bot that would be happy to have that honor - and of which there are many - you are not getting the supplements needed from transfluid donations. You also refuse to lie with someone just for the purpose of getting transfluid donations. Therefore, there lies the need,” she yanked the needle away and closed the armor back over the protoform, “for these daily injections.”

Magnus gave her an equally sour expression. The enriched energon coursed through his systems, which, as usual, rejected a healthy chunk of it. He quickly pulled the waste receptacle close to his frame again and leaned over it, body shaking as his systems forced up the energon.

Red Alert sighed and gently rubbed the mech’s backplates.

.-.-.

When Magnus nodded off into his cube of energon during a meeting discussing tactical warfare, it set off inquiries. He gracefully directed them all to Red Alert and her team of physicians, and she pulled some disease out of her textbooks, saying that it targeted the neural net of a Cybertronian and left them unable to handle much stress and extremely fatigued for, coincidentally, about the same length of time that a carrying cycle lasted.

Since then, he’d had to live up to the lie and had confined himself to his quarters and his office.

It wasn’t fun in the least bit, being cooped up in the same few rooms for the rest of his carrying cycle, of which he had about two-thirds of the way left. He tried to occupy his days by reading and re-reading reports, making absolutely sure they were free of errors. When he had exhausted himself doing so, he would go to his private library and pick out a datapad to read for pleasure… until Red Alert had come in and unceremoniously dropped a large stack of datapads on his desk.

They all concerned how to care for an unborn sparkling.

It wasn’t fun, and he loathed his boredom and his inability to do anything. But what was even less fun, and downright _terrifying_ , was the thought that should anyone learn of his true condition, word could travel back to the one Cybertronian that he did not want knowing about this.

If Megatron heard that he was currently carrying… the big brute wasn’t lacking in processor power. He was far smarter than most Autobots gave him credit for. It would be easy for him to do the math and realize just whose sparkling he was carrying.

He wasn’t endangering his sparkling, himself, and his Autobots any further.

.-.-.

“Who else knows of this?”

Red Alert arched an optic ridge at him and placed a servo to her hip. “Besides myself, no one.”

“Will you be letting anyone else know?”

She furrowed her optic ridges, thinking hard in her processor, as she quickly and gently retracted the needle from his protoform, closed the armor over it, and handed him an energon cube. He took it into his intake and grimaced at the foul taste.

“One of my medical assistants. There’s only one that I trust and that will be there to assist me when you go into emergence. And also the head of the house for younglings; they have to know why your sparkling needs special privileges.”

“Have you found one?”

“In the wealthier side of Iacon. I happen to know the head as well, old friend from the core class days at the University of Stanix.”

“What are the facilities like?”

“They subsist on generous donations from the Autobot government and on donations from the wealthy elite as well, who usually wind up going in and adopting their own children from there. He says there are few that pass through the house that aren’t adopted by at least the age of five stellar cycles.”

“Pass along the information and I will take a look at it.”

“Of course.”

.-.-.

True to the words Red Alert had spoken, he woke up at some point when he had halfway to go in his carrying cycle. He blinked his optics and stared at the ceiling, then around his quarters as he searched for whatever it was that had woken him out of recharge.

He felt a soft tickling sensation along his lower midsection. He sat up and swiped his servo over his midsection in a half-sleep state, searching for the tiny bugbot that certainly had to be there. There was nothing. He sighed and stood up; back struts were aching and hopefully a quick walk around his quarters would help soothe it.

Placing a servo to his backstrut and walking toward the door, he felt it again.

It had to be a bugbot that had somehow managed to get into his impeccably pristine quarters.

Magnus turned around and swept his servo over the lower part of his midsection, hoping to catch it, but nothing. He grit his dentae in frustration and rushed over to his washracks, looking at himself in the long mirror in there. Then his spark stopped.

No bugbot.

But it seemed like he’d begun to show overnight.

His servos swept over the expanse of his belly, confirming by both sight and touch that the sparkling had grown out of the original size of his gestation chamber and now needed more space. He had been flat before, but now he saw and felt the faint traces of swelling.

There was no denying it now.

The tickling returned, more of a strong flutter this time. It hit him right there and then… the sparkling was moving.

Magnus closed his optics and shook his helm, his processor telling him to not panic, that this was entirely normal and to be expected.

His servos still shook, and his breathing became labored and ragged. He closed his optics and counted down from ten to one, trying to calm himself down, but it wasn’t working. Dropping to the floor, he brought his knees to his chassis as much as he could and held his helm in his servos, sobbing loudly into his shaking hands.

He must have accidentally activated a communication link with Red Alert, as the medic rushed in and he heard her voice telling him to calm down, and when he couldn’t, he felt something prick his neck.

Silence and darkness fell over him.

When he woke up he was on his berth and Red Alert was standing next to it, digits flying over a datapad as she tapped in information. A scanning device hovered in midair next to him, primed and ready to fly at her command.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was soft and lined with shame at his reaction.

Red Alert sighed and stopped inputting information on the datapad, tapping the hovering device. It flew over his helm and let out a beam as it scanned him slowly from top to the bottom of his pedes. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I did warn you that you might have some sort of adverse reaction to a physical manifestation of your carrying cycle.”

“You did, but I had hoped I wouldn’t.”

“There’s no shame in being upset, given what happened to you.” The device stopped its scanning and it flew back over to the medic. She took a small chip from its surface and put it into the datapad. “You and your sparkling are fine,” she told him after a few silent moments of reading the information the device had gleaned from him. “The bitlet’s vitals are fine, but just to be safe I’m going to inject with you a bit more of the nutrient-enriched energon to help get them up to speed. Given your size and the size of the sire I would think they should be a little bit bigger than they are at this point. Oh,” she looked away from the datapad and down at her Commander. “Already know what the sparkling is.”

Magnus furrowed his optic ridges and looked questioningly at the femme.

She gripped the datapad and continued, “Whether the bitlet is a mech or a femme, if they’re a grounder, a flyer, a triple-changer. Do you wish to spoil the surprise?”

“No.” He kept it at that and watched Red Alert retreat from his quarters. When the locks were put back in place he curled up on his side and kept his servos away from his abdominal plating.

He didn’t want to know. He didn’t need to form a closer attachment to the sparkling.

He went back into recharge, feeling the sparkling fluttering and twitching within him.

.-.-.

“You’re active today.”

The sparkling kicked in response. It showed on the gentle swell of his belly, a tiny patch of surface lifting. Magnus placed both his servos on his midsection and smiled, rubbing small circles with his thumbs. The bitlet pulsed at him, bright and happy, and they pushed against his servos as they sought his touch.

He tapped three times on his abdomen, leaning back on his servos and waiting for a response. Sure enough, the little one kicked three more times before fluttering within him. The normally stoic mech chuckled lightly and asked, “What has brought on this flurry of activity?”

A moment of quiet, then the sparkling fluttered again, moving wildly. They pulsed impatience and anxiousness at him, eager to leave the cramped chamber and get out to a wider space.

Magnus sighed and grabbed the datapad he’d set aside on the berth with a servo, placing the other one on his abdomen. Decepticon activity had been at a lull for almost the entire length of his carrying cycle so far, but it had spiked again, and it worried him greatly. He gently rubbed his midsection in calm, soothing motions and did his best to not let his troubles get to the bitlet.

Nonetheless, the sparkling squirmed and pulsed worry at him. Magnus internally cursed himself for getting worried and affecting the bitlet. He put the datapad down and looked down at his midsection.

“I’m sorry for worrying you.”

The bitlet jabbed some limb of theirs in his intakes. He pressed his free servo to his chassis and grimaced. “I wish I could tell you that your sire is a good and kind bot, but he is not; he’s responsible for starting this war that I worry so much over. He has killed a great many number of my best soldiers, and…” he stopped himself and sighed. He laid down on his berth, closing his optics. “He has done only one thing of good; given you to me, little one.”

He felt the sparkling pulse love at him. He smiled while his spark pulsed it back at him.

.-.-.

His abdominal cables began spasming hard in the middle of the night. He woke out of recharge, staring in confusion at the ceiling with his spark hammering against its casing. Remembering the information on the datapads that Red Alert had given him, he counted the amount of time since he’d first felt it. Just as he was about to credit the pain to the bitlet kicking, it happened again, and lasted a little bit longer which made him cry out.

Red was at his side in a flash and helped him off the berth. She scanned the base, making sure that no one else was around that shouldn’t know of their Commander’s condition, and quickly herded him to the medical bay. She made certain that the security cameras they passed by were momentarily disabled so they wouldn't catch images or audio of the both of them. The absolute last thing that was needed was for word of Ultra Magnus's condition to get out.

Magnus opened his mouth and let out a tortured, heavy breath as the contraction ebbed away. He felt Red lay him down on the berth and bring out mesh supports to put along his back strut. Out of the corner of his optics he saw the medic put her servo to the side of her helm and whisper quietly into it before she coaxed him to part his legs and open his interfacing panel.

“You’re currently at twenty-two percent dilation. Has the gestational sac broken?”

“No, not-”

Something snapped within him and Magnus gasped and flinched as he felt a gush of fluids rush from his valve and spread onto the metal berth. Red Alert swore under her breath as she grabbed a servoful of cleaning cloths and wiped most of the liquids away. She scanned him again. “You’re at twenty-eight. This is going to be quick; the bitlet’s not waiting.”

A mech rushed into the medical bay and Red ordered him to make certain the doors were locked and bolted shut. “If anyone walks in and sees this, I am going to have your helm. Ultra Magnus, this is my assistant, First Aid.”

A red and white bot tilted his helm at the Commander of the Autobots as Red continued, “He's the most competent one of my medical assistants and the one I trust to keep this secret. The true circumstances of what happens here, and what is said,” she gave him a very pointed look, “will never be spoken of to anyone else.”

Magnus seized up and leaned forward, panting harshly through this next contraction that took over his frame. _Primus_ and all that was sacred, it was the most painful experience he’d been through, and he knew that it was going to get far, far worse.

.-.-.

He moaned as Red placed a cooling cloth on his forehelm and scanned him again.

“Seventy-nine.”

He had attempted to recharge slightly between contractions, but labor was progressing far too quickly for him to successfully do so. He reached out and gripped the edge of the berth with a servo as yet another one came along, making him cry out in pain.

“Is… this is supposed to take longer, isn’t it?” First Aid asked after some silence, arching an optic ridge. “I’ve only been at one birth and it took an entire solar cycle.”

“It varies; the seventh birth I oversaw, the carrier had literally just come in when in the span of a few moments they went from eighteen percent dilation to sixty-one. The sparkling was born not very long after, happy healthy little femme. Speaking of,” Red moved between her Commander’s legs and gently probed inside of his valve. “Ninety-two. Get up,” she patted his leg. “You’re almost there.”

Magnus sighed and closed his optics as he did so, bracing himself to begin pushing. Everything felt so faraway when Red announced one hundred percent and commanded him to start pushing. He felt himself part his legs further, and he pushed down, screaming as he did so.

Red Alert’s servos pushed slightly against the outer rim of his valve, helping the sparkling along. He _felt_ it, the little one’s helm. It tore the lining of his valve, but he couldn’t bother himself with that particular type of pain when he had something far more painful going on. He increased the strength in his grip on the sides of the berth and cried out, venting harshly as the sparkling’s helm passed through.

“Good, good! Just help me get the shoulder struts out, sir!”

The sparkling pulsed stress, worry, _fright_ at him as he bore down again. He wished he could have pulsed back comfort at the little one, but he couldn’t.

Red Alert placed a servo under the bitlet’s helm and used her other one to help nudge a shoulder strut out, followed by another.

Magnus’s intakes hitched as the sparkling slipped out of him. He felt a pair of servos guide him to lie down on the berth. He turned his helm to the side and closed his optics, intakes heaving as he tried to cool down his core temperature.

Then he heard it.

The sparkling hiccuped and cried; the sound was loud, it cut across his spark, and it was so _beautiful_.

“It’s a mech!”

A son.

He had a son.

Magnus turned his helm to look in Red Alert’s direction and opened his optics. He had feared that his sparkling would look like the mech that had forcibly taken him and sired the bitlet on him, but when Red placed the sparkling, wet and wailing and wrapped in a sheet, on his chassis his optics negated that fear.

His son was absolutely beautiful.

He felt his servos shake as he cradled the sparkling against his spark and flared his electromagnetic fields out, mingling it with the stressed field of the little mechling and calming him down. The frightened cries died down and a tiny servo reached out for him. Optics opened

They were blue.

Magnus sobbed in quiet relief that they weren’t red, that this beautiful little sparkling didn’t look like their sire. His spark opened up and wrapped itself around this little mechling that he dared anyone to bring harm to.

The bitlet still had the birth fluids stuck to his frame, and bits of internal wiring and cables. Their umbilical line was still attached. Magnus heard the sound of First Aid at his side, capturing the moment with a picture.

He raised a servo and gently stroked the pale blue faceplates of the sparkling, his spark breaking at the trust and love in those brilliant blue optics that stared at him. Red swooped in with a damp cleansing cloth and wiped away the gold-hued birth fluids, revealing a red chassis and arms on the bitlet and blue helm, servos, and pedes. The sparkling chirred in tired irritation, fixing unfocused blue optics on the medic.

When Red Alert was done, Magnus watched with wary optics as she grabbed a medical tool and snipped off the mechling’s umbilicus. The little mech whimpered and curled into his carrier’s chassis.

“I’m going to have to put him in stasis, Ultra Magnus.”

He clutched the sparkling closer to him, optics flaring. Carrier protocols had kicked into full gear. “Why?”

Red Alert merely thinned her lipplates and tossed the cleaning cloths into a waste bin. “If we separate you two before putting him in stasis he’s going to raise the Pit. He has to be kept quiet until we hand him over. And the longer you hold onto him, the longer he is exposed to you, the greater chance that he will cement the carrier/creation bond. By then, it will be impossible to place him as an orphaned sparkling, ready to go to a new sire and carrier because he will be so attached to you.”

Magnus wanted to ask what was wrong with that; he loved his child already. Really, what was wrong with having an attached sparkling? But he knew it couldn’t be done. He closed his optics and kissed the tiny mech on his helm.

Red readied a syringe with a solution. She looked at her Commander. “Are you going to give him a designation?”

The sparkling chirred softly, kneading his servos on his carrier’s chassis. Magnus sighed heavily and thumbed one of his son’s audio fins. “Optimus. The best thing to have come out of the nightmare I have been living in.”

He swore he heard the mechling chirp quietly, as if approving of his name.

Red Alert nodded and looked over at her assistant. “Make sure you note the name on the datapad, First Aid.” She then gently placed the needle against the bitlet’s neck cables and plunged it in. Optimus gave a soft pained cry that made Magnus want to rip the needle away, but stopped himself from doing so. In a gesture of comfort, he offered a digit to the sparkling, and his spark twisted when small blue digits tried to wrap around it, holding onto it for dear life. He watched as the medic pushed the liquid into the bitlet’s systems and watched as the bright blue of those beautiful optics dimmed and then closed. The little mech’s breathing evened out and he went lax against his carrier’s frame.

The femme pulled out a soft warming blanket with a deep blue hue and removed the filthy one that had covered the little mech, tossing it away before wrapping the bitlet in the new, clean one. “First Aid-”

“Wait.”

She looked down at Ultra Magnus and sighed. He struggled in doing so, but he managed to sit up, leaning against the wall at the head of the medical berth, and he held his arms out. His optics were pleading. “Please,” he whispered in a strained voice. “Just… just a little more.”

For a moment the medic waged an internal battle between saying yes and giving the bitlet back for a few more moments or saying no and handing him off to First Aid to be taken to the youngling house. She closed her optics and reopened them, gently placing the sleeping mechling back in his carrier’s arms.

Magnus looked down at this little tiny life he had carried within him and unwittingly bonded with.He brought the sparkling to his faceplates and pressed his lipplates to the top of his helm.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my son.” His shoulder struts shook with grief as he imagined making a different choice. Droplets of fluid trickled out of his optics and down his faceplates, getting onto Optimus’s serene face. The bitlet twitched slightly, moving within the blanket. “I wish I could revert my decision and keep you with me, but I’m afraid that it is not feasible.”

First Aid walked over next to Red Alert, who had her arms crossed over her chassis and was looking down at her pedes. He placed a comforting servo on her shoulder strut and looked up as the blue mech’s intakes hitched and he sobbed quietly, “Please forgive me. I want to keep you with me.” He stroked the sparkling’s faceplates and kissed his helm again. “But I want you safe more so, and I cannot give you that that here. I love you, my son. I love you.”

He wanted to retract his words from the start, that he would place this beautiful, perfect, little sparkling in a home for abandoned younglings. He wanted to keep this little bitlet, his son, and raise him as a sole creator, but he couldn’t. He would never bond with the bitlet further, never get to see him take his first steps, never hear his first word, never get to be called “carrier”. Never would he see those blue optics look up at him again with love and trust.

“Sir, we need to get him out of here before the sedative wears off,” Red Alert said softly, her voice cutting through his reverie.

Magnus nodded slowly. First Aid stepped up to his side and softly said, “Ultra Magnus?”

The sparkling stirred in recharge and yawned. A miniscule servo opened and closed, grabbing a handful of blanket. The Commander of the Autobots inhaled and exhaled as he gently passed the bundle in his arms to Red Alert’s assistant.

Red came over and tightened the blanket around the sparkling. “You know where to go?”

First Aid nodded.

“Then go, quickly. Ask for Solarwind and say that Red Alert sent you with the sparkling she had told him about.”

The red mech departed. The last Magnus saw of his bitlet was a tiny blue finial peeping out of the blanket as First Aid left the room.

It seemed eons after hearing the door close behind the mech taking away his son that he heard himself start sobbing inconsolably. He held his helm in his servos and sobbed quietly, his spark and his entire being crying out for the sparkling that had only been contentedly kicking and moving within him a solar cycle prior.

Red Alert to her credit didn’t try to comfort him at first, only cleaning the mess of emergence from his frame and from the berth. There were still parts of the gestation sac that hadn’t come out yet, so she suctioned them out and disposed of them. She closed the panel over his valve and placed a thermal sheet over his lower frame and coaxed him to lie back, inserting an energon pump into his frame. “I’m going to keep you here for the rest of the solar cycle to make sure there aren’t any complications that could arise further. Barring anything else I will let you go tomorrow and I will prescribe a few solar cycles berth rest for you until you can resume your physical duties.”

Magnus stared at the ceiling above him and nodded, optics dim and intakes occasionally hitching. This time Red placed a comforting servo on his arm.

“You did what you had to, sir.”

.-.-.

The new class of Autobot recruits were coming in. They had been selected out of many thousands of applicants and, through rigorous training and testing, were the lucky hundred selected for this term’s class.

Magnus gripped his Hammer in his servo and walked out of the base and headed for the expanse of land that the lucky hundred were milling about on, talking and laughing and waiting to be given orders.

His wearied optics scanned all the mechs and femmes of varying sizes. All these hundreds of stellar cycles of war… he knew that by this time in five stellar cycles, anywhere from a third to half of these soldiers would be gone back to the Well.

He was tired. He was tired of death and destruction and all the losses. He did his best to close himself off and make himself emotionally unavailable to anyone and everyone.

He heard Kup shout at the new recruits to line up in rows of ten by ten. They all did so, quickly, and the teal green-armored mech turned to him.

“Lined up just for you sir,” he said in that gruff tone of his.

He nodded at Kup and looked at everyone gathered before him, noting how they all regarded him with fear and awe in their optics.

This was Ultra Magnus, after all. The fearsome warrior that had beaten back Megatron in countless battles since the start of the war. And that Magnus Hammer that conjured lightning…

What anyone wouldn’t give to hold it in their servos.

“Your training will be rough and vigorous, young mechs and femmes, though I am fairly certain you can handle it. You did make it this far, after all. But once you all are completed with your studies and your training,” he transferred the Magnus Hammer from one servo to the other, “I have no doubt you will be among our best warriors.”

Everyone began cheering and he struck the ground with his Hammer, commanding silence. They all regarded him warily again. He nodded at them and went to the first mech in the first row nearest him, a flyer decked in blue and yellow.

“Name, soldier?”

“Nitro, sir!”

He passed onto the next one, a femme in red and black. She stood at attention and said, “Avalanche, sir!”

He stepped over to next frame. He wasn’t looking directly at the new recruits, so when a strong voice said that name he’d held close to his spark for so many stellar cycles, he looked.

This mech stood tall and proud, chassis and arms in bright shades of red and servos, helm, and pedes colored blue. His blue optics looked warily at him. Those audio fins…

“Forgive me, I don’t think I heard your designation.”

The red mech cleared his vocalizer and said, “Optimus, sir. My name is Optimus.”

Magnus nodded and continued onto the next frame. He withdrew his electromagnetic field so no one could feel the absolute terror he felt.

.-.-.

“It’s him.”

“You’re absolutely certain, Red Alert?”

The femme had become hardened by war and far snappier. She tossed a datapad at her Commander and placed her servos on her hips, glaring at him. “When you gave birth I took a sample of your son's genetic code and filed it away as I do with each sparkling that I help deliver. I did checkups and scans of each new recruit recently. That datapad I just tossed at you the new recruit Optimus's file, and this,” she pulled out a smaller datapad and activated it, “is the file I had on your son when he was born.”

Magnus quickly took both datapads in his servos and laid them out next to each other, reading them both. He scrolled down to the results of the genetic scans and saw that the coding matched up on both datapads.

It was him. Without a doubt. His son, his Optimus, had come back.

Magnus placed his forehelm on his desk and gripped the edges of it with his servos. He sighed heavily and closed his optics.

“He was adopted eighteen solar cycles after you gave him up,” Red said softly. “A pair of well-off femmes adopted him and by all accounts they loved him so much and they loved the name you gave him.” She crossed her arms over her chassis and sighed. “He fared well.”

Magnus looked up at Red Alert, pressing his servos against his optics, and said, “I don’t want him here. I gave him up to protect him from the horrors of warfare, not to have him come looking for it.”

“There is nothing you can do.”

“I can have him taken away-”

“For what reason?” Red scoffed at him and uncrossed her arms. “He has done nothing wrong. He hasn’t gotten into any fights, he hasn’t disrespected authority, anything. Which I admire, given that another mech by the name of Sentinel seems bent on getting on Optimus’s nerves and picking a fight.”

Magnus sighed in frustration and stood from his desk, looking out the window of his office at the hundred recruits being drilled by Kup. Out of the crowd he saw his son.

His spark hurt. It twisted in itself. “What happened to his adoptive creators?”

“He was away at work as a data clerk in the library of the University of Iacon when a Decepticon ambush flattened the part of the outskirts of Iacon that his home was in. They never found a trace of them.” Red picked up the two datapads. “It was then that he decided he would fight for the Autobot cause. Like carrier, like son.”

Magnus’s intakes hitched and he whispered bitterly, “He’s not my son. I was never his carrier, I never cared for him, never soothed him when he woke up crying from a nightmare, never did anything for him… he’s not my son.”

“Oh really?” Red Alert replied. He had his back turned to her but he could definitely see that she put her hands to her hips. “That look of absolute love you had on your face when you held him and heard him cry for the first time? What about how hard it was for you to let him go? What about the times that you commed me in the middle of the night begging for me to give you a sedative so you could sleep because you were up so long worrying about him? What about the many times you told me you regretted giving him up?” She raised a servo to her optics and sighed. “ Ten solar cycles after he was born you were about to go out and readopt him under the guise that he would be your adopted son when we knew better, when we knew that it would put him back in harms way.”

Magnus was quiet, optics watching Optimus zip through an obstacle course. He remembered that course, back when he was a new recruit himself so many eons ago. He’d passed that same course with ease.

A moment later Optimus came to a wall he had to climb. Magnus remembered that he had trouble with that particular one and he sighed when Optimus fell off of it in a manner he remembered falling off of it as well.

“I know not a day went by that you did not think of him and wonder about him.” Red Alert’s voice was slightly more distant now as she walked toward the door. “You may not have been there in frame but you were there in spark and spirit, Ultra Magnus. You will always be his carrier, and he will always be your son.”

With that, she left the Autobot Commander alone.

Magnus watched as Optimus reached the final part of the obstacle course, which was crawling on the ground on your front with a huge expanse of electric wires only millimeters above your backplates. He closed his optics and murmured a plea to Primus to help his son get through that particular course unscathed, and when he reopened them Optimus was standing up, scratched, dirty, but alive and smiling. He was the third one to finish the course.

A small part of himself wanted to break the vow of silence he’d taken so long ago with the determination to protect his child. He wanted to tell his son that he was his carrier, that it had pained him so to give him up and how much he still loved him, after all this time.

But that wouldn’t do any good.

It would only make Optimus an even bigger target than he already would become.

He curled one of his servos into a fist and placed it on the window, resting his forehelm on it. His blue optics followed the red and blue frame as it stepped closer to the Autobot base until he was out of sight completely. Cybertron’s sun was setting over the horizon.

He pulled out a small photo capture form his subspace, and stared at it. He looked so young and frightened in it, and Optimus even moreso as he wailed and reached for his carrier in his first moments of life. In his optics, however, was the purest expression of love he ever held for another being.

Giving up his son was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

But it had been for the best.

**Author's Note:**

>  **February 4, 2016:** For those so inclined, a sequel to this fic titled [_The Secrets We Carry_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5897530) has been posted.


End file.
